Norbert said, “Sir, I am loyal to the Guild, and you are my superior, and the founder of it. Your place in history is peerless. Who has done more for the human race and for the future of the human race? You are a demigod to all who admire you. It is unbecoming a gentleman of your stature to belittle or berate your ex-lover.” He dropped his voice and spoke in a lower tone. “You know how little minds seek forever to mar the memory of the great. Do not give historians an excuse to add unseemly incident to your eternal record, and subtract from your glory.”
Cazi clapped her hands. “That was flattery as creamy, thick, and false as anything a Fox could say! And yet Ximen cannot discount it, because of his pride. Masterfully done, O, masterfully done, pretty Norbert! Pity you were not born as one of my girls!”
Norbert bowed. “An assassin must learn many skills. Thank you, Cupcake.”
Del Azarchel cleared his throat and scowled, and said to Norbert, “To answer your question: nothing can be done while Jupiter lives.”
Montrose said, “I never did anything to him to drive him mad. It is your doing. That is your brain writ large. If you don’t like the way it looks, look to yourself.”
Del Azarchel said, “Lesser beings cannot understand the sanity or insanity of gods, but I can know when Jupiter is serving my purposes and when he is not.” Del Azarchel shook his head and stared at Norbert. “I cannot believe he betrayed me. The report you saw must be in error. Or a deception by that Fox.”
Cazi pouted. “Not me. I’d boast.”
Norbert said, “I can prove my words.”
Even Menelaus Montrose looked surprised.
Menelaus said, “How are you going to prove it? The astronomical instruments out front are fake. You are not going to be able to pick out a stray interstellar asteroid from here, much less get the careful reading of which side melted how. And if it is not still in the beam, how would it be visible?”
Norbert said to Del Azarchel, “If I do prove it, prove the treason of Jupiter, what then? You say you have a means to destroy Jupiter. Can you?”
Del Azarchel nodded briefly. “I can. If you prove your case.”
Norbert raised his eyes and raised his voice. “Jupiter! I know you can hear me!”
Del Azarchel looked at Norbert sidelong, and said in a voice of disgust, “You do not listen. He would not plant bugs on holy ground any more than I would. I’d destroy the Church, if she crosses me, but I would never desecrate her.”
Norbert said, “By the same token, if you can walk onto holy ground with a clean conscience, so can he. Jupiter sent a kenosis, inhabiting a body.” And he raised his voice again. “Jupiter! I know in whose body you are hiding! You were the only one who did not stop moving when everyone else collapsed! Show yourself!”
The entire back of the tent was torn suddenly down as if yanked in a vast mouth of some rough beast with a twist of its powerfully muscled neck. And in the wide, square tattered hole, framed by night and twisted branches, it loomed. Ungainly, huge, and moving with a ponderous dignity, the vast bulk stepped forth, its footfalls strangely delicate. The branches of the dream-apple trees, as if in awe of the creature’s majesty, or as if their internal circuits had been overwhelmed, had twisted silently and curled and pulled themselves aside, so that no twig barred the creature’s way nor scraped its broad back.
It was the hippopotamus.
4
The Ire of the First Power
1. A Mortal Hour
The long, coffin-shaped head of the hippopotamus twisted oddly as the flesh and bone and blood ungrew and regrew. Eventually the being who stood before them had the aspect of a centaur, a quadruped from which a human torso, herculean chest, massive arms, and proud head emerged. The face was aquiline, dark-eyed and handsome, a mirror to Del Azarchel’s, save with the one oddity that the hair and beard were white, not dark, and the beard flowed across the jawline ear to ear like a lion’s mane, not like Del Azarchel’s precise and pointed goatee.
But the difference between the higher and lower forms of humanity was made strangely clear during this transition. A Hermeticist with his amulet or a Fox Maiden with her whim could alter a human being from one preset form to another rapidly, because posthuman neural circuitry was relatively simple. To move and reorganize the complex cellular structure of so advanced a being was the matter of more than an hour. Montrose and Del Azarchel stood without moving, without fidgeting and without blinking, while the hippopotamus changed into a centaur and grew itself a human head.
Norbert, being mortal and growing weary, sat in the empty magician’s chair, watching the slow and disgusting play of muscles and red flesh re-sculpting itself. Cazi, with an odd smile but no word of explanation, swayed over to Norbert and sat in his lap, sliding one sinuous silk-clad arm around the back of his neck, and filling his nostrils with the warm perfume of her hair, filling his lap with the rounded firmness of her peach-shaped bustle. With her other hand she took out a golden cup in which she tossed and caught a silver ball, and she laughed gaily at this simple game.
Norbert sat confounded in that supernatural fashion Fox Maidens always confound mortals, and that all-too-natural fashion women always confound men. Eventually he found his native brashness, without bothering to turn on his artificial brashness, put his arm around her tightly beribboned waist, and spoke small talk, and asked her questions about her history and youth. She giggled, teased him, replied in riddles, nibbled on his ear, and whispered to him horrifying secrets man was not meant to know.
Before the hour had passed, he had answered her riddles and made her laugh, and commanded her to allow him to be her escort to the next seasonal fair, where there was to be dancing and diversions, to be held at the Feast of the Assumption; and she had with seeming nonchalance and sidelong glint of eager eyes agreed.
“In August?” she asked in a taunting tone. “What year would that be on the calendar?”
And so he was reminded to return to the business. Reluctantly, he put her from his knee, and stood, for the face of Jupiter had finally changed, assumed a human hue, and opened its eyes.
“You called me, mortal man,” said Jupiter. “But know you what you call?”
In those inhuman eyes was an infinite depth.
2. The Roots of the Oak
Norbert, since he could not look the superior being in his face, made a courtesy of necessity and made a polite bow. “Sir, it is my hope that I have called a being too proud to lie. Your father has asked me to prove that the issue of calendar reform, the heresies of Photinus, Lares, and Lemur were cliometric vectors you imposed into human history.”
Jupiter said, “Know you my mind?”
Outside the tent, there was a flare of lightning as he spoke. Then came a sound of thunder rolling from one side of the sky to the other like a bronze chariot. It may have been a coincidence, or the electrostatic discharge of an improperly focused surface-to-orbit beam, or the flux of the never-ending core-to-surface adjustments in Tellus energy levels. Or it may have been supernatural. Norbert’s theory was that any sufficiently advanced irate machine intelligence was indistinguishable from an angry god.
Norbert said cautiously, “Naturally I cannot hope to unwind the streams and oceans of infinitely variable calculus in which you have hidden your hand, my lord. I cannot know your mind. It is above me. But I can know your heart. The roots of an oak are no higher than the roots of a humble shrub, after all. You are still human, driven by human things.”